Thirty Years in Australia

by Ada Cambridge

We travelled beside the river for some hours, and my recollections are of particularly lovely views. Doubtless the radiant morning gave them much of their charm—Australian scenery is really a matter of light and atmosphere—and allowance must be made for that enchantment which distance lends; still, it was a pretty country. The Murray wriggles through its two colonies like a length of waved dress braid, and here it curved between hilly banks and woods whose fringes dipped into the stream. Primeval forest it was, too (except for that daily rarer brush fence), the free home of beautiful birds that may now be sought in vain within the boundaries of the state; and a stream still populous with wild-fowl of many kinds. By noon we must have worked a little inland, for my journal says it was a creek we camped by for lunch; and in the afternoon, during which we skirted a little hamlet that is now a considerable town, we descended to country called "Plains" in the title of its presiding station—the house we reached safely just as night closed in. Here there was the usual new baby (which G. christened next day), and no hostess immediately visible; the governess received me—in the inevitable condition—and put me to bed.

Speaking of those Bush babies, I would point out that medical attendance was in the category of non-essential luxuries that are now necessaries of life in every class. When it cost a little fortune and the waste of days to get a doctor, the struggling Bushman's wife, as a rule, took her chance without him. Occasionally she was conveyed to a township which possessed one, and there awaited in lodgings the opportunity to profit by his services; but the majority of Bush women preferred to stay at home and make shift with the peripatetic Gamp, old and unscientific as she always was. There was no fuss made over these affairs. The wives took after their husbands, who could drive without gig-lamps in the darkest night. I remember, however, that the mistress of this last house had all but lost her life in her recent confinement. She was a beautiful woman, delicate in every way—not of the ordinary type of squatter's wife.

With her I rested for a day, while G. made business excursions on horseback, and we spent a second night under that roof. This brought us to Sunday—a typical Bush Sunday.

A large family party loaded the waggonette which took us to morning service some miles distant. The place of worship, as usual in such parts, was the district school-house, called the Common School (the title "State" was substituted for "Common" when the Compulsory Education Act came into force, after which these buildings, enormously multiplied, were not so readily obtainable for what are called "sectarian" purposes). The school-house was utilised by the denominations in turn, all having been placed on the same footing by the withdrawal of State aid from the originally established (English) church, only the Roman Catholics standing out from the miscellaneous company. This seemed a sad "come-down" to us at first, with our hereditary reserve and exclusiveness in relation to "dissenters"—a word long eliminated from our vocabulary. The miner who, being invited to church, replied affably, "Ay, ay, I'll give ye all a turn," showed us our place in the colonial scheme of things, and we did not like it a bit. But we soon adapted ourselves. And G. and the current Presbyterian parson of the parish, that he could not call his own, used to study their mutual convenience in arranging country services, and give each other a lift when on the road together. A pity it was that the "dissidence of dissent" could not have been further modified—a pity it is, and must continue to be—for the existence of half a score of little conventicles struggling one against the other for the suffrages of one poor little town—the money question in each case dominating and determining every other—is not good for their common cause.

In the simple seventies and these remote outskirts of the world, one could still cherish the ideals of that English prelate who said of Disestablishment that "it will nearly drown us, but at least it will kill the fleas," one could survey the Church purified, before the new vermin hatched. It was charming to see the country carts gathered round the lowly wooden building, the horses unharnessed, feeding under the trees; they had brought worshippers from many miles away, their sincerity as such proved by the trouble they had taken to reach the rendezvous, and by the heartiness of their demeanour while service was going on. The school forms, made for children, would bend, and sometimes break, under the heavy men, close-packed along them; the mothers peacefully suckled their babes as they listened to the sermon; the dogs strolled in, and up and down. Sometimes a dog had a difference with another dog and disturbed the proceedings, but unless this happened no one thought of driving the dear creatures out. They were the sheep and cattle dogs of the congregation, each inseparable from his master.

This sort of function it was that I attended on the morning of the one Sunday of that Murray Journey. A family present then convoyed us to their home—another solitary station—whence, after a good meal, they drove us to the second service of the day, similar to the first. We then drove ourselves to a third station (a delightful place, G.'s favourite camping-ground on every Murray trip), where, of course, I went at once to bed, G. "having church" for the last time in the evening, in the dining-room of the house.

Monday was a rest-day here. On Tuesday morning we made the necessary early departure, and a few hours later met with the first of our two serious adventures.

It was soon after our picnic lunch, early in the afternoon. We were trundling through the eternal solitude, refreshed and content, enjoying our conversation and the brilliant weather, when we saw a Bush fire far ahead. Since we were not responsible for starting it, we hailed it as a welcome variation in the monotony of our drive. We hoped to skirt it near enough to see what it was doing. Bush fires were pleasing novelties in those days; now the faintest distant scent of them gives me a "turn" like a qualm of sickness. I shall explain why later on. This incident does not explain it, although it well might.

As we advanced, the area of conflagration opened out. It was an extensive fire, and in thick country. Not grass, but trees were roaring to the sky. Our anxiety to get close to it gradually gave place to a wish that it were further away. Misgivings deepened as we drew near; alarm supervened. "It is right across the track," said G. at last; and so it was, and far to right and left.

The last thing we wanted to do was to turn back, and indeed the wings of flame curved in behind us even as we drew rein to discuss our chances—not until we had driven quite up to the blazing wall, in the hope of seeing through to the other side, and finding a crossing-place. To go into the unburnt scrub on either hand would have been madness, for nothing could have saved us had the fire caught us there. Every inch of earth provided fuel for it, except the narrow, dusty buggy track. To that we knew we must stick at all hazards, and a very hurried survey of our unpleasant position showed us that there was nothing for it but to go on—to plunge into the flaming belt, and get out as best we could.